Scientists invented a cutting-edge battery innovation in electric-cars that makes car-batteries to never lose its charging capacity even after 400 cycles of charging and discharging.
Electric vehicles are game changers of this century. Owing to clean and green concept and its low-cost rate of refueling had made EVs to go virally adherable that currently over 27 million people own an EV.
Albeit, the dark side of an EV battery after range anxiety, is its temper to lose its charging capacity, as it happens to any type of battery. When batteries chemically age, the amount of charge they can hold diminishes due to loss of active electrode material (loss of storage medium).
Viewing this as a challenge, Scientists from University of New South Wales in Australia and Yokohama National University in Japan addressed the shortcoming by developing a viable and vastly superior alternative to current battery technologies – a battery for electric cars that do not lose any capacity, even after hundreds of charging cycles.
Battery that doesn’t Lose its Capacity
The breakthrough they claim, was possible when the team investigated a new type of positive electrode material with “unprecedented stability” that can be used in durable solid-state batteries.
Solid-state batteries use solid electrode + solid electrolyte unlike Lithium-ion batteries which use liquid or polymer gel electrolytes. Solid-state batteries are hailed as ‘game-changers’ but limited to wide usage due to its durability issues of continuous charging.
The researchers blended the positive electrode with an appropriate solid electrolyte and negative electrode. The material they focused on was Li8/7Ti2/7V4/7O2 – a binary system composed of optimized portions of lithium titanate and lithium vanadium. The material has a special property that it has nearly the same volume when fully charged and fully discharged. Fortunately, it paved the way to eradicate the fading capacity in batteries.
A Breakthrough in Battery-Field
The new battery was able to retain its capacity of 300mAh with no degradation over hundreds of charge-discharge cycles in lab tests.
The charging capacity of the new solid-state battery was 100% for over straight 400 charging-cycles.
“The absence of capacity fading indicates the superior performance of the material compared with those reported for conventional all-solid-state cells with layered materials,” said Associate Professor Neeraj Sharma from UNSW.
“This finding could drastically reduce battery costs. The development of practical high-performance solid-state batteries can also lead to the development of advanced electric vehicles.”
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Advantages of Solid-State batteries
Solid-state batteries that are good enough for electric vehicles in terms of price, safety, capacity, charging speed, and lifespan. These batteries if commercialized have plenty of supremacies over the conventional Li-ion batteries.
1. Charging time gets reduced: Solid-state batteries are capable of getting fully charged in less than five minutes.
2. Solid-State batteries are Safe: Unlike liquid / gel electrolytes used in Li-ion batteries, solid electrolytes are non-flammable and thus have lower risk of catching fire. The recent fire-catching incidents of EV two-wheelers can be rectified if these batteries are deployed.
3. Less Heat Generation: Solid-state batteries’ heat generation at inside is only 20-30% of that of conventional batteries.
Solid-state batteries have been described as the “next big thing” in battery development by one of BMW’s top engineers.
What you think of this breakthrough? Comment down.
(For more such interesting technology and innovative detailing, keep reading The Inner Detail).